The case of Korematsu v. United States (1944) involved the treatment by the government of persons (both citizens and aliens) of Japanese descent during the early years of World War II. Amid fears that an invasion of the West Coast was imminent, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had issued Executive Order 9066, which permitted various restrictions on the Japanese residing along the coast. Within this framework Lt. Gen. John L. DeWitt, who was in charge of the Western Command, had barred all persons of Japanese descent from the military area of San Leandro, Calif. For his failure to comply with the order, Fred Toyosaburo Korematsu, an American citizen, had been arrested and convicted.
In upholding Korematsu's conviction the Supreme Court, speaking through Justice Hugo Black, concluded that Congress and the president, under constitutional war powers, might exclude persons of Japanese ancestry from areas of the West Coast during a wartime emergency. Korematsu, said Black, was not excluded because of hostility to him or to his race but because military judgment feared invasion of the West Coast or espionage and sabotage by Japan. The Court was not unmindful of the hardships imposed, but, said Justice Black, "hardships are a part of war, and war is an aggregation of hardships." Justices Owen Roberts, Frank Murphy, and Robert Jackson registered strong dissents.
Feared as potential saboteurs during World War II, 112,000 Japanese Americans, 70,000 of them Nisei, were evacuated from the West Coast by an executive order (Mar. 18, 1942) and placed in 10 "relocation centers," where some were confined for up to 4 years. In late 1944 the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the legality of the evacuation (see KOREMATSU V. UNITED STATES), but at the same time it ruled, in the case of Mitsuye Endo, that the prolonged detention of Japanese Americans whose loyalty had been ascertained was illegal.
Under a law passed in 1988, the U.S. government was to issue individual apologies for violations of civil liberties and constitutional rights and award $20,000 in tax-free payments to each eligible internee.